There’s a mention of wiping out a village of settlers and the characters opposing it based on there being civilians. The youtuber says all of them are complicit. I take issue with this as an immigrant, because it asserts agency to those people. People who have to move don’t have agency over it. There absolutely are upper class people who are traveling and colonizing, but there’s plenty of people who have no choice, and I assume colonies were built on their backs. I am not saying colonialism isn’t bad, I am taking issue with the lie that the people who are the bottom of the barrel choose their situation. The video pretends all people have full agency, while the reality is people who are displaced are the most likely not to have any choice. Normal people don’t want to abandon their lives.
I am a triggered piss-poor immigrant who is going homeless and jobless soon and my only agency is affording a ticket to where it will be. Fuck shit like this. I can imagine a fucked over person being promised to emigrate for a better life taking it without a thought because their only “choice” is dying from hunger. Pretending exploited lower class magically doesn’t exist under colonialism is such a stupid take.
I agree with you, immigrants are different from colonizers, immigrants do it out of necessity, just like my grandparents.
“You see kids, if you replace the bad king with a good king then everything will be okay.”
Despite its strengths, Avatar has some very weak points in the ideological front. Decolonization is one of them as already addressed here, and in my opinion not as much as you could in the Avatar universe: Republic City, which later becomes the main setting of Korra, originates according to the comics from the oldest colonial remnants of the Fire Nation, which were never returned to the Earth Kingdom because settlers had enough time to form families there and thus that somehow makes decolonization impossible without having a negative outcome: the children of settlers were born in the lands they took, and in the eyes of the writers, that is enough to justify never being returned to its original peoples (extrapolate that message to Palestine, the USA, Canada and so on and you will soon see how this is not good).
But this sentence I referenced at the beginning is also another point where the Avatar universe fails big time. In the first season of Korra there is a clear reference to a popular movement where, instead of class struggle, you have a movement of non-benders dissatisfied with the societal inequality between benders and non-benders. The way the show has of acknowledging this problem without altering the status quo? Elect a non-bender for president. And when Obama became president, racism was no more.
But to be fair, Korra is a terrible show overall.
They also never actually showed this social inequality, if anything it just came off as jealousy. Funny enough if it actually were class conflict then you wouldn’t have seen the rift between benders and non-benders, with most of them sticking together
I may or not remember a couple of scenes in that season of benders overpowering and bullying non-benders for petty reasons as the only portrayal of that inequality. Correct me if I am wrong though: my brain sometimes erases things for my own sake (such as most of Korra).
Class conflict doesn’t exist in fantasy settings written by liberals of course, only in the mind of radical looneys. At most you will only have things that can be solved with enough Burny Sandals social democracy. Have you ever heard of Norway?
Nah you’re right, they showed some small scenes but nothing definitive like “this certainly shows the difference between the two”. It’s why I felt Amon was such a corny villain…you take away all the bending in the city and now all forms of oppression are over?
I enjoyed Korra a lot, but my trick was reframing the entire show in my mind as Korra being an accidental villain who blocked any chance for social change because she was too ignorant and bullheaded to understand the situation.
Like it’s some kind of Bad Ending where the avatar reincarnates as a gamer.
I wanted to like Korra, I really did. But seeing Aang turned into the Statue of Liberty in front of a colonized settlement turned international territory, the spirit lore transformed into oriental-themed christianity and Toph of all people talking about the antagonists having good points but being too radical was too much doodoo from the trashcan of ideology for me to handle.
The season antagonists in Korra were all pretty much right. Amon tried to empower an oppressed underclass, Unalaq was ostensibly fighting to end segregation (his ulterior motive ultimately undermines this), Zahir tried to disrupt a literal secret cabal of world controlling elites, and Kuvira tried to end hereditary monarchy and decolonize stolen land. The show briefly touches on this, though unfortunately it’s only S2 (the worst season) where Korra learns from her antagonist, rejects the status quo, and changes the world for the better at personal cost. The show missed an opportunity to build on that and have Korra deal with the fact that she was raised as a child soldier/WMD by the white lotus to secure the Fire Nation-led “united forces” control over colonized land.
By contrast, Ozai was basically a one dimensional obstacle to be overcome. With the lion-turtle ex machina, Aang didn’t even have to sacrifice anything to overcome that obstacle. I’m conceptually fine with Aang staying true to his principles and finding a non-lethal solution to Ozai on his own, but having it passively handed to him at the last minute by magic without him needing to change, learn, or grow was one of the show’s biggest missteps.
“You have to sacrifice your earthly attachments to master the Avatar state to defeat the firelord.”
“No.”
“Oh, ok then, nevermind. But really though, you have to sacrifice your principles and kill this guy in order to save the entire world.”
“Also no.”
“All right then, here’s some never before established magic to resolve this extremely specific problem. Also here’s the girl that rejected your advances as a reward. Enjoy getting everything you ever wanted!”
Finally somebody who managed to put my “vibes” from watching that show into a succinct statement.
Aang didn’t want to be the hero but it was forced on him. Korra was chomping at the bit to be the Avatar, right? Finally gets it, and is overwhelmed by suddenly being solely responsible for fixing things that are way beyond her control and understanding. Then Forrest Gumps her way through mistake after mistake for the rest of the series…
Good video. I had forgotten about that episode.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I haven’t seen the video, but what I remember from the episode is that Jet seemed more like an adventurist/wrecker than a committed revolutionary, who wanted to satisfy his bloodlust while trying to appear as one of the “good guys.”
The neoliberalism notwithstanding.
Basically yeah. It’s about showing that he just wants revenge and is willing to kill people just to satisfy that. I mean, the whole show is neoliberal “don’t kill the bad guy” pacifist shit where Aang won’t even kill magic fire Hitler out of principle… but like also… it’s a fucking kids show? Are we really going to Marxist critique a damn kids show for not killing the bad guy?
wants revenge and is willing to kill people just to satisfy that
Revenge is good and it is the right of colonized peoples to seek revenge for the atrocities the colonizers inflicted upon them.
Are we really going to Marxist critique a damn kids show for not killing the bad guy?
Sure, because we can have better stories. Iron Widow is a Young Adult novel that’s about fighting systemic oppression by brutally killing the bad guys.
Disclaimer I did enjoy Avatar quite a bit and that’s why the flaws rankle me so much. There’s a lot about it that’s good. I just wish it had committed harder to supporting revolutionary liberation then undermining its own framing by libbing it up.
tbf marxist critique on kids shows is really common. breadtube for all of its revolutionary might loved talking about kids shows so much that it’s pretty much all it ended up doing.
i kinda get it. i mean kids programming is going to hand deliver whatever the dominant ideology is straight to the minds of impressionable kids. there’s something to analyze there. don’t know how productive it is but it’s fun, at least.
I get what you’re saying and while Aang wouldn’t kill Ozai out of principle, which does make a little bit of sense since he is the literal last of the Air nomads and want to continue to live in their way, the show made it pretty clear that killing Ozai was the absolute right thing to do. Every single other Avatar Aang talked to literally said to him that he should kill Ozai, even the other Air nomad Avatar that came before him said that. And while Aang didn’t do it, the option of killing was never showed as wrong in this particular case.
It’s a show produced in the imperial core, and the liberalism comes with the package, but I do believe there’s a lot of good stuff in there too.
Oh, absolutely you are right 100%. I love the show despite the gripes. But it is also just a show. I watch it for entertainment. It has a good story and good jokes. The fact it’s being so heavily critiqued is just… Idk. Weird? Of all the horrible shows and animes out there, some that literally support actual fascism… To go after little ol Avatar seems really silly to me.
I love the show despite the gripes. But it is also just a show.
Yeah that’s completely fine, but what people consume, specially pop culture since it is so popular and specially as a kid, help mold what they think. You’re not wrong that it is just a kid’s show, but I think it’s great to have people do marxist analysis of this type of stuff, we need to dispute these spaces that are already occupied by neolibs and fascists, who critiques shows all the time already. But you’re right, there should be more effort into critiquing from our side on shit that is much more problematic and actually fascistic.
Agreed.
Also, it’s not like they’re ousting fire nation settlers with their civilian killing terrorist tactics. Then you could at least approach the issue with some kind of Fanon-esque view on the violence of the colonized, but that’s not what’s happening.
They’re wiping out an entire earth kingdom village, simply because they think it will take out a small handful of fire nation soldiers in the process.
Jet is definitely an adventurist/wrecker, in the logic of the narrative.
Its the “Oh, there’s Hamas under that town. Everybody there is a valid target” mindset.
It is funny how it takes the kids glove approach to fighting an Imperialist power.
“Is the messaging effective”
It’s a fucking nickelodeon kids show. Lol. What? Take a step away and breathe. JFC. If this is the kind of shit you are gonna get rilled up about. Enough to make a 10 minute video critiquing, again, a fucking kids show, for not openly condoning killing a bunch of civilians then honestly your opinions will never be taken seriously by me.
Maybe take a step back and consider “As a Marxist, is this really the best thing for me to spend my time on? Is this the best I can do to spread communism and get people to take us seriously? Attacking a popular show that was made for kids.”
I think this is a bad take. Sure, it is a kids show, but anyone who has a mild amount of knowledge of marxism knows about the concepts of base and superstructure, and the division of the latter into political and civil society described by Gramsci.
Taking a look at the messages delivered by TV shows and other forms of media lets us see the type of ideological positions that the current mode of production allows, promotes, concedes and forbids at the moment of their production to all or some demographics - Including children and teenagers, whose opinions are the easiest to mold and shape for the future. Whoever thinks media aimed to the youngest sectors of society does not have any political effects has been completely oblivious to the spineless liberalism that Potter-mania has resulted in years later amongst masses of millennial man-children.
And yes, there are more efficient ways to use your time to spread communism than recording, editing and uploading a 10 min video essay on a children’s cartoon, but so are there better ways than commenting about it on a Cambodian trout fishing forum. Take it easy and do with your life and time whatever you want.
This feels like some weird bit. It’s kids show in the imperial core… What do you expect? Them to openly advocate killing civilians? They went about as far as the could given it was a show meant for kids. They evern advocate in the end for Aang to kill Ozai. They basically off screen kill tons of fire nation soldiers on multiple occasions. They aren’t going to show people dieing or the true horrors of colonialism and yet they are still able to get the idea access to kids that colonialism is wrong. There’s only so far you could get with such a plotline in a kids show. Such a weird and random thing to go after. I feel like there’s so many other shows that are way worse for kids that deserve this level of scrutiny or more. This almost feels like how Ultras go after AES countries for “not being communist enough” or something.
